Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/289

 LEGENDS OF THEBES. 257 Kadmus, Antiope, Amphion and Zethus, etc., are the most pro- minent and most characteristic exploit?., next to the siege of Troy, of that preexisting race of heroes who lived in the imagination of the historical Hellenes. It is not Kadmus, but the brothers Amphion and Zethus, who are given to us in the Odyssey as the first founders of Thebes and the first builders of its celebrated walls. They are the sons of Zeus by Antiope, daughter of Asopus. The scholiasts who desire to reconcile this tale with the more current account of the foundation of Thebes by Kadmus, tell us that after the death of Amphion and Zethus, Eurymachus, the warlike king of the Phlegyae, invaded and ruined the newly-settled town, so that Kadmus on arriving was obliged to re-found it. 1 But Apollo- dorus, and seemingly the older logographers before him, placed Kadmus at the top, and inserted the two brothers at a lower point in the series. According to them, Belus and Agenor were the sons of Epaphus, son of the Argeian 16, by Libya. Agenor went to Phoenicia and there became king : he had for his off- spring Kadmus, Phoenix, Kilix, and a daughter Europa ; though in the Iliad E*uropa is called daughter of Phoenix.2 Zeus fell in love with Europa, and assuming the shape of a bull, carried her across the sea upon his back from Egpyt to Krete, where she bore to him Minos, Rhadamanthus and Sarpedon. Two out of the three sons sent out by Agenor in search of their lost sister, wearied out by a long-protracted as well as fruitless voyage, abandoned the idea of returning home : Kilix settled in Kilikia, and Kadmus in Thrace. 3 Thasus, the brother or nephew of ' Homer, Odyss. xi. 262, and Eustath. ad loc. Compare Schol. ad Iliad, xiii. 301. 2 Iliad, xiv. 321. 16 is nspocaaa Kfiopurup of the Thebans. Eurip. Phce- niss. 247-676. 3 Apollodor. ii. 1, 3; iii. 1,8. In the Hesiodic poems (ap. Schol. Apoll. Khod. ii. 178), Phoenix was recognized as son of Agenov. Pherekydes also described both Phoenix and Kadmus as sons of Agenor (Pherekyd. Fragm. 40, Didot). Compare Servius ad. Virgil. .32neid. 1. 338. Pherekydes ex- pressly mentioned Kilix (Apollod. ib.). Besides the Evpuireia of Stesicho- rus (see Stesichor. Fragm. xv. p. 73, ed. Kleine), there were several other ancient poems on the adventures of Europa ; one in particular by Eumelus (Schol. ad Iliad, vi. 138), which however can hardly be the same as the rd VOL. I. 170C.